14 DAY TRIAL // A group of amateur ghost hunters claim they managed to make contact with the alleged spirit of Richard III in a house with connections to the former Plantagenet monarch.
The members of a paranormal investigation group, called Haunted Heritage, carried out a séance at Donington le Heath Manor House, in the room where Richard III spent his last night. They say the spooky encounter was recorded last year, but they decided to keep it secret due to the frenzy generated by the discovery of the king's remains under a Leicester car park.
Their ghostly audio clip supposedly recorded in the 700-year-old building near Coalville, Leicester, which is now a museum, clearly captures a man's voice saying “Richard” when the group asks “What is your name?”
Although the ghost busters clearly try to hint at the fact that the voice was actually the king speaking, they avoid jumping to conclusions. One of the 12 members of the group, 56-year-old medium Gill Hibbert, is reserved when it comes to making bold statements.
“We are being careful about saying it’s Richard III because we can’t prove it. We’re trying to get a historian to look into other Richards who have lived there. But no one has found anything yet,” he says, according to Leicester Mercury.
However, Hibbert, who works at a leisure center during the day, says the name Richard is particularly important because they were standing next to the bed in which the monarch spent the night before he died in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
“It was in the main room upstairs in the manor house – it was coming up to the witching hour,” he explains.
The paranormal investigators used a so-called “ghost box” to make contact with the 15th century monarch, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. The “ghost box” is a modified radio they claim allows spirits to speak through white noise.
They spent the entire night at the museum, but nothing unusual happened until 11.45pm where they asked if anyone was there. Interestingly enough, their question was not left unanswered as you would have expected.
“Then we heard the name, ‘Richard’ – it was so clear. We were blown away. The night was quite uneventful up until then – we had a few knocks and bangs – but when that came through it was the icing on the cake,” Hibbert said.
According to the ghost hunters, the recording was very clear and was described as one of the best examples of paranormal contact they had experienced.
What do you think? Was that a real ghostly encounter with Richard III or not?